Know Your Role

The title is a quote from renown philosopher Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and it tells me everything that is wrong with my writing.

Lee Child knows his role, as does Richard Osmon and the lesser-known Elly Griffiths. They are all successful writers because they know their role: stay true to your Brand.

My brand used to be, I’m a funny guy. I published humorous essays in magazines and newspapers in the States, some of them nationals. And when I moved to the UK, my Clueless Ex-Pat persona amassed a respectable following. Using that platform, I was able to get a book published, and it did very well, thank you. And because I had a good brand, even the self-published sequels did all right. But then, I strayed.

Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the general rule is: “dance with the one that brung ya.” The Jack Reacher novels are now written by Lee Child’s brother, Andrew Grant, who writes as Andrew Child in an attempt to fool you into thinking it’s the same brand. But it didn’t fool me, and I now no longer follow the series. I don’t know how much the brand is suffering, but they are at least one customer down, resulting in 99,999,999 sales instead of 100,000,000 for each book.

I’m sure Lee is grinding his teeth in rage over this.

And the multi-talented Richard Osmon, after having developed a loyal following for his Thursday Murder Club brand, inexplicably (I am still not sure how he convinced his publisher to allow this) started a different series. I eagerly bought the initial book, but I am afraid it fell flat, and there has not been a second.

Elly is not immune to jumping ship, either. Recently, she has ended the popular Galloway series and started a new one, keeping the crime-solving element of her brand, but adding time travel. (I wish her well. The first was, eh, okay, and I’m willing to give the second one a chance, but she’d better up her game.)

Why am I telling you all this (aside from filling space)? Because drifting from my brand has put me in a precarious position, publishing-wise.

To be fair, moving on from my Clueless Ex-Pat brand shouldn’t have been fatal. I had milked that cow dry and, using the contacts I had made as a semi-famous humour writer enabled me to get Finding Rachel Davenport published. And that, too, did fairly well. Had I followed it up with another crime novel, which my publisher was keen for me to do, I may have established a new brand as a crime writer.

As we know, however, that second crime novel never happened. The Muse struck—and when you are in the arts, you go where the Muse takes you—and I ended up with an eight-book fantasy/adventure series that no one wants. (Oh, didn’t I tell you? The guy I met at ComiCon who wanted to publish The Talisman has decided to drop it. That’s the reason for this post.). And, not only that, I then wrote a near-future dystopian novel, simply because I had written The Talisman for my grandsons and they told me I needed to write something for my granddaughter.

Writing a novel for any reason results in a grinding, angst-ridden marathon, but to write a novel because you have to is something else (a grinding, angst-ridden, self-inflicted trip to a sewage filled dungeon, perhaps).

That novel—The Exodus Connection—is finally finished. I’m deep into revisions now, but after squandering my funny-guy brand, and desperately attempting to present myself as a Fantasy/Adventure Series Guy (which I definitely am not), I now have a Dystopian novel to try to place. Finding one potential publisher for one novel is hard enough, finding multiple publishers for three different genres at the same time is an exercise in futility,

To have any chance at publishing any of them, I’d need to develop brands as an action/adventure guy, a dystopian thriller guy, and a crime writer. Who has the time? I’m having enough trouble keeping the half-dozen people who still read this blog entertained.

And so, I send out what submissions I can (real publishers are thin on the ground these days) pretending I am devoted to each of the genres while knowing I will never again write a Fantasy/Adventure or Dystopia novel, and having accepted the reality that none of my funny-guy fans have any interest at all in these books.

The good news is, I do have a solid crime manuscript, that has been legitimately published before, and I am planning to write another. So, if I follow that thread, I may end up with a Crime-Writer brand after all.

But what to do with The Series, and The Granddaughter’s book?

* I stole this cover of a Larissa Reinhart book, so the least I could do was order one. She seems to have a self-publishing empire, publishing her own books from her own “publishing” company (a lot like my own Lindenwald Press, but less of a joke). She seems to be doing okay, which goes to show you often need to make your own road if you want to get anywhere in this business.